So having gotten back from Vegas on Monday Morning, you’d expect that I would have written something here…but I haven’t. Why? Mostly because I’ve been overwhelmed. Vegas baby. Vegas.
On Thursday night we left Toronto around 9pm, with me flying Danny Ocean style (sports jacket, and arrived in Las Vegas at about 11:10pm. We went and got our rental car, where we met a guy named Randy who said he could get us tickets to the UFC. I gave him my cell number, and hoped he’d come through. Ryan John and I then checked in at our hotel (the Excalibur). We then headed over to the Ghost bar at the Palms because we’d heard it was a cool place to hang out…it wasn’t, we suddenly realized that a bar in Las Vegas is still a bar…crappy. We then drove around looking for somewhere to eat, but as we’d soon find out, there is nowhere to eat in Las Vegas after about midnight. We tried our hand at a couple of craps tables, but everything was cold, so we decided to call it a night. At this point it was about three in the morning Vegas time, or about six am Eastern…ouch.
The next morning we woke up around 9 and headed over to Terribles for breakfast. By the time we got there though it was about 10:20, and breakfast was over, and they were preparing for lunch…so we had some time to kill. We played craps, but I sucked hard that morning, so I went over to the blackjack tables where I made a modest winning. By then it was time for breakfast, so we hit the buffet. Good, cheap food was had, and we headed off for the day. First on our stop was the outlet mall where I picked up a new watch, some gifts for Char, and a couple of cool things from the Nike store. On a lark, we decided to check out the MGM Grand to see if they had any tickets for the UFC. Along the way, John had to hit the washroom…something that would play into our favour. We got to the ticket booth, and overheard someone say that the MGM Grand had JUST opened up a block of tickets. If we had come ten minutes earlier, or ten minutes later, we would have missed the tickets. Instead, we picked up three duckets in a pretty good spot. We went and checked out the weigh in, and saw a bunch of the fighters milling around. We decided to leave the MGM Grand and head back to our hotel, which gave us some time to change before heading down to the Golden Nugget to see Bob Newhart. We decided to take a cab to the Hilton for a couple of early Warp Core breach’s first, and then proceeded to the Golden Nugget.
At the Nugget, we had the buffet, and Ryan almost keeled over from some weird illness that he was fighting. After he recovered somehow, we headed over to Binions to get our lower case “g” gamble on. We hit the craps table, and after a few minutes the dice came to me. I then went on a personal record 50 minute rolling streak with the dice. By the end of the rolls, I was up about $100.00, and we had to hustle to catch Newhart. Unfortunately Bob wasn’t as exciting as the craps, and Ryan had another unfortunate case of the sickness, and almost got knocked out AGAIN! Once again he came back though, and we got our gamble on again, although Gamblor (the god of gambling) wasn’t as good to us this time. I ended up down overall on the night, and we all decided that we should head back to the hotel a little early so we could get a head start on our day Saturday.
Saturday we went to Terribles for the breakfast buffet, and got a little gamble on at the craps table where I lost even more money. After that, Ryan needed a visit from Naplor (the god of naps), while John and I went off to get our shop on. We hit the Fry’s Electronics which turned out to be a bust, before hitting the Outlet Mall agan, where we picked up some more goods. Heading back to the hotel (or Roomlor…the god of rooms), we picked up Ryan, who decided he wanted to hit the mall for a couple of minutes. We headed back there and then got in character for the evening’s festivities.
Over at the MGM Grand, we bet on a couple of fights (I put $20 on Liddell to win, while Ryan put $20 on Liddell, and $20 on Triggs, both underdogs), grabbed something to eat, and then watched the fight. My full report on the fight can be seen on TSN.ca’s website: UFC 52 an amazing show…but suffice it to say that it was an incredible experience, and both Ryan and I won $30.00. We then went back to Binions, where Gamblor wasn’t with us, and I tapped myself out. With that we headed back to the Excalibur, and headed over to the Luxor for some food (because everywhere else we had tried to eat was either closed or unappealing to us)…we got on the wrong tram though and ended up at the Mandalay Bay. At Mandalay we searched for food, and found nothing, until we stumbled on this little burger place that sold overpriced, but delicious hamburgers and $5.00 shakes (which was one of the things on Ryan’s list of things he wanted to do in Vegas). We then headed back to our hotel, and while on the tram saw Georges St. Pierre who had faced a nutcase named Jason Miller earlier in the evening. That was kind of cool. It was about 2 am when we got to bed, and we had another huge day ahead of us…little did we know it would be the best day yet.
Where was the Borg 4D experience?